the process of the product.

Ecopaw On Coroflot

2011-01-13T11:27:00.002-05:00

I've finished and uploaded the project slides for Ecopaw from IPD last semester to Coroflot (the design jobs/portfolio website). Go check it out and let me know what you think!

Ecopaw on Coroflot

Thanks for reading!

EcoPaw Show Materials

2010-12-18T14:10:00.003-05:00

Thought I'd upload our EcoPaw team posters from the IPD trade show. These were printed 3'x4' and looked great!

We didn't win unfoutunately, came in mid pack. While we won the web show nicely, we were in 5th during the trade show in terms of market share at 10.4% (the 2nd - 5th were all with in 1% of each other). We also overstocked by quite a large amount and that hurt our bottom line, but in the end I'm really proud of EcoPaw.

Thanks for reading!

Trailer Design Moving Forward

2010-12-18T13:09:00.005-05:00

So this last Wednesday I presented what I've done this semester for my thesis project to a panel of 3 professors, 2 of which were new to my project. I'm glad to say it went quite well.

They liked the direction and my project narrative (my target consumer is right below), and suggested to help me differentiate myself from other more bike centric trailers on the market to really heighten in my promotional materials and in presentation the walking cart aspect of my trailer. Perhaps adding a second person to my narrative, a Charlene to my Charlie (I'm thinking Charlie's wife, she doesn't bike but likes to walk to the store.)

This past week I really moved the trailer design forward. I had made a rough frame out of pvc pipe, but it was really premature to start building, all it really did was confuse the issue when I was still not even close to sure of a final form to test. I omitted the physical models from the presentation and stuck with sketches.

What I really moved forward on was getting away from the Travoy idea which has really held me back and thinking about the trailer and bag as one neatly integrated instead of two separated entities. So I put away the old sketches and ideas and just started to sketch more organic forms of a bag and trailer together.

The bag clips over a frame which gives it form and rigidity. The red levers are at fold points. The vertical wings which give depth to the bag fold flat and the wheels would detach to fit in the back of a closet or behind a door.
The walking configuration. The castor walking wheel folds down and locks into position. At the top there is the push/pull handle.
The riding configuration, the castor wheel folds up and out of the way while the trailer hitch arm fold ups to the seat post and attaches there. The actual hitch mechanism is unresolved at this point but I know it will need a full range of motion to let the two wheels of the trailer stay in contact with the ground when turning. I've also realized that the castor wheel support structure will need some covering or sealing as during riding the bike wheel will spray water and debris all over it. One other note, the trailer is not quite to scale of the bicycle, its drawn way to big here. Think 1/4 smaller.
The bag will be two compartments, a smaller top compartment for small or fragile items (phone, wallet, keys, laptop). I see this having fold up dividers for item need customization. The larger lower compartment would be for large or bulky items, such as full grocery bags. Ideally, the two compartments will be combinable for extra large items (think large dog food bags).

And moving forward,

Thought are always welcome! Thanks for reading!

Trailer Design Iterations

2010-12-07T12:01:00.001-05:00

It's nice to now think only about bike trailers and not pooper scoopers, but anyway...

So, after totally being called on just emulating (a nice way to say, knocked off) the Burley Travoy, I'm back to the drawing board on the frame design. I'm still aiming for the same set of parameters for the trailer when I initially set out on this project,

walkable and bikeable
lightweight
stable w/ load (riding or walking)
customizable bag options

So initial ideas all followed the Travoy model of flat bed, foldable, support structure around the bed. I played with ideas for adding a third wheel for walking as I perceived the Travoy to be a bit tippy when standing upright (especially when loaded) as it stood on two wheels and a small leg. My goal was when walking to have at least 3 wheels on the ground for stability.

My methodology for joining the metal tubes (plastic housings basically) also was derived from the Travoy. In my trailers new form, I'll mostly likely use a similar joint as this seems to be the best and most elegant method. Also, this drawing came out well.

In sketching for the new frame I decided to work off of a single main tube as the backbone of the trailer with the main support wheels moving in towards the frame for riding and out to create a tripod with a castored wheel for walking. Walking stability was a high point with this iteration.

A guide slid up and down the main tube, keeping the wheels lined up.

The sliding guide however took up quite a bit of space on the tube that could other wise be used for mounting a frame for cargo. Thus only the top and bottom of the tube could be used for mounting, with a aimed cargo weight of 60 lbs, this would create quite a bit of stress and would need large amounts of reinforcement at the junctures adding complexity and weight.

To combat the sliding ring, a grooved guide was added to the side of the main tube, keeping the wheel struts in alignment and clearing room for more cargo supports. The raising and lowering of the legs would be accomplished by a lever on the top of the main tube connecting via cables and pulleys inside the tube to the wheel struts. Pull the cable up and it would pull the wheels in to the frame for riding. An issue with this was locking the wheels in place and the extra complexity of the pulleys and guide wheels. The more moving parts mean the more to go wrong. I realized I was moving away from Dieter Rams 10 principles, and was making the trailer more and more complex. The more complex, the greater the possibly of a mechanical failure.

So, in this vein of simplicity with stability, I'm working on elimination of as many moving parts as possible. Goodbye cables and pulleys.

This is the latest scanned sketch I have (I know, its super rough), moving the two main support wheels to be stationary (to eliminate as much stress on a joint as possible) and moving the castored wheel to the fold down third wheel. This is the direction I'm currently moving the trailer in, presently in Rhino, with the aim to be making a physical model out of pvc pipe starting the 8th.

Thanks for reading.

EcoPaw : What's your carbon pawprint?

2010-11-18T13:13:00.008-05:00

Oh yes, IPD (the competitive team design class) is in full swing. It's all due Monday afternoon. Luckily my team has worked together amazingly well and we are almost done. I just finished our 3rd prototype, which is pictured here in all it's green glory, and have a few alterations to make to our final product. Minor things though, not drastic redesigns. We are losing the rubber pinch points (the bag holders) as the bag stays put without them and they are costly to manufacture. Also the way the cordura fabric attaches to the body is being redesigned to keep the shoulder strap out of the way when scooping. Now all I need to do is make 3 more for Monday!

We had our final design crit yesterday with the professors and it went very well. Shaun Jackson and Bill Lovejoy called our teams design "sophisticated" "sleek" "cool" "hip" "urbane" and "possible winner". Oh yes.

Oh, the name, Ecopaw, is because the body is made out of recycled polystyrene and all the bits are recycleable.

Ecopaw comes with biodegradable bags and biodegradable poop stoppers (they are made from chipboard).

When done, toss the biodegradable poop stopper into the bag and it all will compost.

In this generation, the fabric cover pulls around back and is held magnetically.

The fabric cover pulled over the mouth of Ecopaw, again held magnetically in place on the back side.

The back side of Ecopaw, where the removable shoulder straps connect to the body.

Snap button closures on the front side as well.

4 finger rubberized handle for good grip in cold and warm weather.

The maligned Pinch Points, they don't work consistently and aren't really needed. They were also a pain to make. Although, Shaun Jackson (my thesis prof) was impressed at how resolved they were!

Looking down the mouth of EcoPaw. You can see the magnets on the bas and the inside of the snap closures.

Ecopaw in it's carry state. As the shoulder strap is removable, if the user wishes they could carry Ecopaw by hand.

So, seeing as how this is a design competition I was holding off posting until late in the game. If the other teams haven't figured out their design by now, well, I doubt they could successfully knock off my design in a weekend. I'm feeling pretty good about this all right now obviously.

Thanks for reading!

Detroit Connections Photos

2010-10-28T10:01:00.004-04:00

Originally this was just supposed to be only two or three photos from Detroit Connections, but in going through my photos I found it hard to chose only a few (I've taken about 350 photos so far and the kids are so great!).

For those of you who don't know, Detroit Connections is a class where one day a week we spend the day at a Detroit Public school (ours is Garvey Elementary) teaching 5th graders art. Detroit schools have basically no money so all extra (ie, non testing subjects) have been eliminated. We are art facilitators more than anything, not really teaching processes but introducing materials to explore. It's a great experience every time and I really enjoy spending time with the kids and getting to know them.

My fellow group leader, Jenn with (R to L) Kortnee, Cierra and a girl who is best friends with Cierra but I can't remember her name as she's not in our group.

Making wood sculptures, the three girls in our group decided to team up and make a neighborhood.

Andre, showing me his sketch book cover. Heck of a kid, loves super heros and calls me Peter Parker (as I always have my camera and my name).

Melanie (our prof) and Gerrard discussing ideas.

Kortnee and Day'Jaire showing me their panted hands.

Andre created something he was excited about!

Our GSI, Charlie, helping clean the kids up after paint mixing.

Thanks for reading!

Initial Bag Sketches

2010-10-14T18:43:00.006-04:00

Well, I've been working on thesis, and I thought I'd share a few sketches and other things from my work so far.

I'm designing a bicycle trailer for urban based commuters for anyone who doesn't know. I've been sketching and surveying users (thanks to all who have given me responses!). Below are a few bag sketches. The bags will attach to a blank trailer and will accept up to several bags at once (one bag dosen't fill the entire thing). There will be three bag sizes, small, medium, large and each size will be customized for certain types of objects or tasks. For example, the small bags would be placed so they are easily reached and hold small, more valuable objects (wallets, keys, phone, iPod, babies). So far, I've just worked on the outer forms of the bags and haven't delved into the interiors yet.

A few small, upper bag ideas are what I present here.

This bag is more in the vein of the large bag, designed as a large cargo volume bag for carrying groceries for example. Basically anything big goes in here.

A few sketches on the over all form, these sketches in particular are only with two bags. The trailer would accept up to three small bags is my thinking for now.

I've also been learning to TIG weld aluminum this week. It aint easy. I've never welded before, so we decided to start with the hard stuff so that when I back track and learn to weld steel it will be a piece of cake for prototyping early forms.

One of the better beads I laid on the Al. Practice, practice, practice.

Thanks for reading!

Bicycle Commuting Survey

2010-10-07T10:40:00.002-04:00

Hello all! Help me with my senior thesis!

For my senior thesis I'm working on a bicycle commuting cargo solution. I'm looking for responses from anyone who has even a passing interest in bicycle commuting or bicycles in general. Your responses are very much appreciated!

Bicycle Commuting Survey Part 1

Bicycle Commuting Survey Part 2

Thanks!

Cycle Slides

2010-09-14T19:33:00.006-04:00

I'm quite sure I've posted Cycle here before (it's about 2 years old now), but I've discovered slideshare and am trying it out. Bare with me!

Thoughts anyone? I like that you can view it full screen and in high resolution, but dislike the fact that you have to click through to their website to see it fully. Hmm.

| Get your SlideShare Playlist

The Final Countdown

2010-09-14T11:13:00.003-04:00

Welcome to Senior year! I've got a studio now (well a 8'x8' gray box, it's a cubicle really) and just bought some new sketch books. All set to design.

For Fall '10 I'm taking,

I.P. (Integrative Project)

Basically, Michigan's fancy name for senior thesis project. I actually refuse to call it IP because I think it's a silly name. I do get my own studio for this course though!

I.P.D. (Integrated Product Development)

More acronyms! Teams of designers, engineers and MBA's design, produce and 'sell' a product at a fake trade show. We are designing, wait for it, pooper scoopers. Yep, pooper scoopers. I swear if the MBA in my group says "value added", I'll punch them.

Detroit Connections

I go to Detroit on Fridays and do art projects with 4 graders who would not have access to art classes otherwise. I love kids and am excited for this one.

Yep, just 3 classes (well along with the 1 credit required lectures for all students). Thesis is 6 credits a semester and IPD is 6 credits as well. I'll be busy with those two.

So, what am I thinking of doing for senior thesis? Well after kicking around a few ideas, including developing Home Base further and working to get it manufactured on a small scale, I decided to work on a project that I knew I would love and finally get something bike related in my portfolio. I'm going to design and build an urban trailer system for bicycles. The sort of thing bicycle commuters would use.

So, initial criteria I'm working towards,

-pullable by bike and walkable by hand

-foldable

-light weight

-customizable with different bag attachment options

-water proof bags in lieu of a rainfly

-stable (two wheels)

-maneuverable (small wheels)

Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Home Base in Action!

2010-08-27T17:46:00.001-04:00

Yep, Home Base in action on my wall! It's working well!

Business cards!

2010-08-11T19:39:00.004-04:00

I'm going to be super prepared for job fairs come fall.

One idea, two versions. Which do you like?

Obviously, the real ones will have my phone number as well (between the u of m design and the website), but I didn't want to post that online so readily!

Thanks for reading!

Architecture of Objects Final Show

2010-08-11T14:51:00.001-04:00

Finally, I'm posting pictures from the show!

My name in print on a big poster!

Home Base on the wall.

Home Base

2010-06-15T15:05:00.001-04:00

Well, finally it's posted. It's been finished for over a month, but I'm just getting around to posting the finished Home Base.

I'm actually lucky I even have them now, they were stolen from the Architecture of Objects show and were not returned until a good friend from the architecture school wrote a rather strongly worded stern email to all of the architecture school and someone anonymously dropped it off. I still owe my friend a beer for that one.

I made 4 of them, in the range of colors seen above. They went over very well in critique and everyone was very positive about what I had made. Shaun (my professor) seemed to like them very much as well. I think the best comment I received on Home Base was (paraphrasing) "These are strong enough as a product that they don't really need heavy marketing to get people to buy them. I would like one in my apartment. The blue one specifically."

I was very happy that I got the pieces powder-coated, there nothing like a professional paint job. I'm getting pretty good at making my models, but the guys at Cramer Tech know their stuff.

I decided not to exhibit the black Home Base in the show because of a little paint blemish and the wood piece for it was a little uneven so I pulled it. The three remaining did well I thought.

These are the custom magnetic note holders I made. I took steel rod, hollowed it out on the lathe and made a pocket for a neodymium magnet to sit inside. Each end was then capped with a rubber bumper to protect the steel frame of Home Base. I was quite proud of these little buggers, simple but because of the strength of the magnets they hold well.

These are the custom fasteners I made to hang Home Base. Similar in form to the magnets, these are a polished steel jacket over a press fit aluminum threaded insert. A hanger screw (coarse wood screw on one side, fine metal threads on the other side) was then threaded in and Loctite was used to fasten them in place. The bumpers were the final caps to the fasteners.

I presented Home Base with these as the hangers and people had no particular issues with them and they held heavier keys well. For the final public show however I used a different fastener that Shaun showed me that was wider in diameter and had a groove in it to hold the keys. Similar idea, but a bit nicer finish so I went ahead and substituted them.

I'll follow this up soon with pictures of the public Architecture of Objects show, it was pretty nice, if a bit packed with objects. The class made many many nice objects so I think Shaun had a hard time picking what got in. I was quite happy to get my clocks and Home Base in, 2 projects out of 4 in the final show isn't bad!

Thanks for reading!

She comes in colors ev'rywhere!

2010-04-15T11:25:00.004-04:00

Just got my metal pieces back from powder coating, they look very nice. I'm quite happy I decided to spend the money on having them professionally painted. I picked a cobalt blue and a semi-gloss white and stuck with the matte black on the third piece.

The cobalt blue with an unfinished wood piece hung on it. The magnets go in the holes and it will then be covered in a birch veneer and shellacked. Besides finishing the wood pieces up, I'm working on making some custom mounting pieces out of aluminum stock and hanger screws so that the Home Base sits flush with the wall. Trip to the hardware store and Alro metals for parts to fabricate the fasteners out of and then I'll be ready to glue the metal to the wood! Busy few days ahead!

Thanks for reading.

Full Scale Prototyping of Home Base

2010-04-07T11:49:00.003-04:00

Just a few quick pictures from yesterday's work session.

I'm making a full scale prototype with the final materials and it's coming along nicely. The metal is working great, I ended up going with at 3" wide curve in the metal to hold the mail. 2" was just to skinny for large packages or when the Sunday paper comes.

The prototype is painted matte black and I'm actually enamored with the color. I was planning on powder coating all of the pieces, but I may stick with the flat black on one of them. I does take fingerprints quite easily and I'm a bit worried about scratching the paint. The powder coat will be much more durable, a matte black powder coat may be in the works.

The unpainted metal forms waiting to go to powder with the painted metal prototype.

Tomorrow I'll be routing out the new wood pieces (a bit wider than the originals) and we will see how well the meld with the metal.

Thanks for reading.

Paint Testing

2010-04-06T11:09:00.003-04:00

Today for Home Base I started cutting out the metal. So far so good, simple straight cuts for the metal. I bought 18 gauge steel yesterday, not to thick, not to thin, but thick enough to hold it's own weight up.

Next up is bending the U bend on the rollers, luckily we have a small sheet bender with a 2 1/4" diameter. Perfect for the bend I'm looking to create.

I'm also doing some painting tests with some spray paints I have left over from the clock. Flat black, gloss black and flat white. I'm planning on powder coating the metal, but I wanted to test just in case the powder coating ends up being to expensive or takes to long. Deadlines and budgets after all.

I'm still not sure what colors to try, partly I wanted to see a white and black on the steel. I'm thinking painting one black (just need to decided gloss or flat), another flat white, and then a different color. I'm thinking a flat secondary color (maybe a yellow or cyan). Really something to throw some color on the wall.

Testing, Testing.

Thanks for reading.

Home Base Sketch Model

2010-04-02T17:39:00.008-04:00

Well, it's final project time in Architecture of Objects. We were supposed to do a furniture piece, but I really felt interested in a wall storage product and Shaun let me explore it.

So, I'm working on a storage solution for keys and mail. The product will go beside the front door and would magnetically hold keys on it's front and hold the mail in a curve created by the supporting metal structure. It's sort of a J, placed on the wall.

Below is a sketch model, affixed to my fridge because I didn't want to nail the sketch model to my wall. The keys pull the cardboard down a bit, so the front is not vertical like the final metal model will be.

The cardboard here is going to be powder-coated steel and the foam core will be routed out fin-ply covered in a birch veneer and stained with a light shellack.

The curve in the metal provides a nice 8" x 5" x 2" slot for storing mail, and is deep and wide enough to support magazines, newspapers and small packages. Above the mail slot there is a large 10" tall by 7" wide metal area perfect for notes and reminders held by small magnets. The smooth Birch front is the perfect place to store your house keys with the embedded bank of neodymium super magnets holding them securely with out the tangle of hooks. Simply hold your keys up to the wood and let go, the magnets will do the rest.

I've gone through a few different names for my product, I feel that this is really one of the first products I've worked on that needs a name that describes what it does. My possible list includes,

Home Organizer (all ready used)

Key Base

Wall Organizer

Key Home

Wall Store (all ready used)

Home Base

Home Store

Wall Base

Store

Home Store

Right now Home Base is the front runner. I was thinking the packaging could read,

HOME BASE

Your Families Mail, Key and Message Board Base

Or something like that. It needs work.

I'm starting routing right now, initial routing tests were mildly successful. I've made the product as a whole 1" wider, providing more room on the metal for messages and more room on the wood for keys. It also provides a wider place for the mail to sit so that it dosen't easily fall out if it's not centered in the slot.

Routing the rough pass.

Routing the finish pass.

After the finish pass. I'll take this to the table saw and cut off the excess stock.

So that's were I am currently, on Thursday I'll be spending the afternoon routing out the new wider pieces. In the mean time, cutting out the metal and bending it. Then it needs to be taken to the powder-coater for finishing. Step by step.

I'm making multiples (I'm thinking 3) since they are quite simple and with a smaller object multiples really read nicely.

Thanks for reading.

Art Deco Desk Clocks

2010-03-25T10:21:00.004-04:00

In Architecture of Objects I just finished up with a quick clock project. I really enjoyed the project, quick but the clock is such a classic design brief. I had sketched for a few days and because of time constraints started to build my original design the day before it was due. Of course, in making physical models, all the issues come out and I scrapped the idea at about 6pm and started sketching again.

My inspiration for this clock was actually from the video game, BioShock. I had recently being playing the game and was inspired by the immersive art deco environment and decided to pursue a simple clock which would try to bring the styling of the 1920's into modern materials.

I decided on using clear acrylic which would be laser cut, painted and then heat bent into shape. It was quick, easy and repeatable, which was good since the clocks were due the next morning.

I have three designs in three colors (gloss white, gloss black and matte black).

My favorite of the three is the white clock with the hour markers on the perimeter of the face. Currently, I'm experimenting with the same design in black. The sunburst design, while calling up the art deco influence, exposes the mechanics behind the clock. I'm trying different things with the design to make the mechanics less visible including moving the sunburst starting point out and making the cutouts thinner. We'll see.

The clocks went over well in crit, Shaun felt I had succeeded in styling my clocks after the 1920's and art deco and actually said he would like the white design on his mantle. I consider this to be the ultimate compliment.

Again, for this class I am trying to make products that could be mass produced. With a jig to get the bends correct every time this design would be quite easy to produce on large quantities. I've actually been kicking around the idea of making some more of these and selling them on Esty. We'll see what comes out of it.

Thanks for reading.

Finished Ikabana Vase

2010-02-18T23:26:00.012-05:00

Last Thursday we finished up our Ikabana vases and had our crit. I'll get to the crit in a second, first a bit on my vase and how it was made.

The vase is made of Quickrete exterior anchoring concrete wrapped with aluminum. The concrete was cast in a mold made from mdf. The casting was the biggest headache of the process, mainly because of poor molds made by yours truly. I originally also used Rockite instead of Quickrete. I switched because I wanted the waterproofing that exterior concrete that could be used below the water line would afford and the roughness of the Quickrete versus Rockite's smoothness as a contrast to the precision of the aluminum.

Rockite and mold headaches early on.

The Quickrete in the new improved mold which didn't break part on me. I also wised up on the concrete breaking and soldered together a supporting skeleton using welding wire, mini rebar basically.

The Quickrete vase after coming out of the mold, being sanded to fit the aluminum wrap and being sprayed with a polyethylene gloss. The dark sections on the interior of the vase are leftovers from previous molds attempted with cement colors added. I didn't use the colors (I was using a charcoal) because they pushed the curing time of the Quickrete out to 24 hours instead of 1 hour. It was a result of the process and not planned, but the coloration on the concrete was welcome as it gave the vase a weathered look.

The aluminum being water jet cut in the Digital Fab. Lab.

Aluminum wrap, pre bending. It was bent using the brake in the cold metals shop.

And, the final result with flower arrangement in crit.

So, how did the crit go? It was rough. The worse part about rough crits are when you aren't expecting a rough crit before you show your piece.

The biggest issue was that I wanted to contrast the precision and reflectiveness of the aluminum wrap and support structure against the dark roughness and uneven qualities of the concrete. The issue became that when contrasting precision against rough you have to push precision to its most precise and roughness to its most rough. I felt the aluminum was precise enough considering that I unfortunately had to hand bend the lower tabs holding the concrete and that the concrete it self was visibly chipped, porous and rough but this is a grad level course and ultimately my level of precision and roughness was not up to the class standards.

Also, the aluminum more than dominated the vase, especially when filled with flowers. This was actually a very real problem and looking back on the vase now I feel like it was really the root of all the problems with my vase. With more concrete in view the roughness would be stronger and take all of the emphasis off the precision and allow a more well rounded viewing of the vase.

A lesser bone that they had to pick was the gloss on the concrete made it to finished if I wanted to portray roughness. Jeeze, I want it to be rough but not so rough that it would look out of place in a home so I really didn't know what to make of this one. Since only a few people held this opinion I think I'm chalking that one up to personal opinion and architects who are destined to become professors instead of practicing architects.

My flower arrangement was also a problem for my classmates. It was not dramatic and voluminous enough to work with such a strong, grounded (read heavy) vase. I completely agree on this account and I really didn't care about this issue. I have never arranged flowers before and it was incredibly challenging. Shaun Jackson acknowledged that the whole class had issues with arrangement, but I really feel like he was expecting gold from us on the flower front. All I know is, I'll design the vase, someone else can put the flowers in it.

Really the only good thing anyone had to say about my vase was that they liked the way it was presented with the flowers dominating the foreground of the table and not pushed to the background and the flowers being off center in the vase. A few people also mentioned to me later that they felt some people were being to nitpicky in criticizing my choice of gloss and the concrete not being rough enough. This was nice to hear, but frustrating because they had failed to speak up during the crit.

So, how can I make this a better vase? Well, number one would be adding long thing rectangular windows of sorts to the long aluminum dominated sides to bring the dark concrete through. I really feel this would solve allot of the vase's problems. Also, there was one corner where the aluminum was not completely flush against the concrete, this has to be rectified on the next model with more careful assembly of the vase and the aluminum.

One of the biggest issues for me as a designer over all that has come out during this project (and this intensive class in general) is that I need to get better at speaking about my work. I've taken classes dedicated to the language of design so attempting to put my designs into words is not as much an issue for me. The issue lies in vocalizing my designs during the crit itself. I think this really is an issue of pubic speaking, something which I am not particularly afraid of when I have practiced what I am going to say. There in lies the issue, I am not in the habit of preparing what I am going to say before a crit beyond a few words. Therefore I end up stumbling through my ideas and not effectively portraying them. So, practice, practice, practice.

On a fun note, my vase is now on display outside of the Media Union here. It looks pretty good in a little nook Shaun Jackson found for it. Little win!

Thanks for reading.

Ikabana Vase Sketch Models

2010-02-09T11:19:00.003-05:00

Just a few of the sketch models I've made in deciding what design to pursue for my final piece. The models are made out of foam core and chip board which is laser cut and then either glued or pinned together.

In these models, the foam core represents the reservoir of the vase and will be made out of Rockite and the chipboard represents stainless steel which will be water jet cut and bent into shape around the Rockite.

Iterations of two designs I'm working with.

The first design is a tall reservoir with a stainless piece of steel straddling the Rockite. I wanted to create a strong, grounded receptacle rising out of a light, kinetic form drawing the eye upward to focus on the flowers using the vase as a way to focus the viewer on the natural beauty of the arrangement. The tab of the stainless steel on the top of the vase would act as a divider between the heavier plant material and the more delicate flowers and would reinforce the upward motion of the vase.

This design will be 8" tall, with a 3" x 2" reservoir.

The only difference between these two iterations is that the model on the left has a shorter piece of chipboard which creates a smaller foot at the bottom with a straighter line as it travels up the Rockite.

This is the other of the two designs I've been working on. This is a much more rectangular, low to the ground vase. I wanted to be able to spread the flowers of the arrangement out horizontally and create some arcs with the plant material. This is a much more static vase, sitting only 1/2" off the table surface and with a horizontal rather than vertical flow of the lines.

The bottom of the two, short feet support the vase and two longer tabs support the base of the Rockite reservoir. This design really focuses the attention of the vase on the stainless steel as it wraps the Rockite almost completely. The Rockite is viewable from two 1/2" strips along the top of the vase and on the small ends of the vase. I wanted the Rockite to simply peak out from the steel.

I prefer the skinnier of the two low vases. It would be only 2 1/2" wide versus 4" wide for the larger version. I felt the increased size of the larger version would create to large and cumbersome of a base for the delicate natural plant material. The final piece will be 8" long x 3" tall x 2 1/2" wide, with a 2" deep reservoir.

I've decided to move forward with the low, horizontal Ikabana vase as I appreciate it's simplicity of form and simplicity of materials in manufacturing. A theme for me in this class has been designing for ease of mass production and I hope to produce these vases on a larger scale if possible after this semester is done. The simpler form and straight lines of this vase lend themselves to reproduction. While there is always value in the one off hand made object, the challenge of reproduction on a large scale interests me as a designer looking to soon move into the work force.

This week I will be milling a mold out of MDF to cast the Rockite in and water jet cutting out my stainless steel piece.

Thanks for reading!

Finished Wall Lamp

2010-02-08T14:57:00.006-05:00

Alright, late on an update about past projects again. At least this project wrapped up only a few weeks ago!

I finished up and presented my wall lamp 2 weeks ago now. It went over pretty well, a few concerns about the visibility of the bulb when viewed from a sharp angle from the wall, such as walking down a hallway; a concern of which I agree. Also a problem for some people was the brass grommets I used to attach the tyvek paper to the frame. This was honestly less of an issue for me, but stainless grommets would work just as well. The brass simply dosen't bother me as much as it did some people.

I made a wall lamp because wall lamps save valuable floor space in small apartments and make spaces feel bigger by illuminating the walls. I wanted to create a small shade that would float off the wall, creating an aura of light on the backing wall. Ideally the lamp would be accompanied by multiples along the wall, illuminating an entire wall of the space.

The frame was made of 1/16" and 1/8" steel welding wire which was bent to shape and then the pieces soldered together.

The frame was then sandblasted and spray painted gloss black.

The tyvek paper was folded around the frame and held by brass grommets.

This is the final result.

Overall, I'm honestly quite happy with the lamp. I feel that it would be a design that would be easy to produce in larger quantities and the paper diffuser would be customizable in color and pattern. I'm thinking about making some for gifts for family and friends over this year.

Thanks for reading!

Ikabana Flower Arrangement

2010-02-04T22:47:00.006-05:00

Last week in Architecture of Objects, Shaun had a master of the Japanese art of flower arrangement, Ikabana, come in to talk to us and give a demonstration on Ikabana. Sort of a crash course into a delicate, purposeful art form if there can be such a thing.

I feel terrible that I cannot remember the woman's name who came to talk to us, but I do remember that she owns the Chelsea Flower Shop and is from the modern school of Ikabana. What is the modern school? I as a non-Japanese person would have a hard time telling you what exactly that means. She couldn't even really explain it to us.

Manipulating grasses by hand. She was amazing working with the plant material, very purposeful with force, never overly stressing the plant.

My favorite arrangement of the six she made. The arrangements were put in the TCAUP Architecture office and the Art & Design office.

It was really quite enjoyable, I was a bit dubious before the class that we were doing flower arrangement, but I'm glad to say it was much more interesting than I had anticipated.

Our assignment now is to make Ikabana vases and flower arrangements for them. We are of course limited to certain materials, but for a Shaun Jackson project, it's really quite a wide palate. We could use metals, woods, stone, cement, rubber, or plastic. Our designs have to incorporate at least two of the materials and use both in an non-token elemental way.

This should be an interesting project over the next few weeks, I think the biggest challenge for me will be making sure to think of the organic plant material as a primary part of the design and not a secondary piece.

Thanks for reading!

Scavenger Hunt Photos

2010-02-01T10:45:00.003-05:00

Our first assignment for Contemporary Photography was a simple scavenger hunt type assignment. Basically, since the course is introish in nature and many people don't know their cameras very well, the assignment gave us words and we went out and took pictures of how they inspired us.

I'm only going to present the images I printed for crit or ones that I particularly like.

Consciousness

A portrait of my good friend Chris.

Invisible

This is Lawrence, a homeless man in Ann Arbor. We had a conversation over coffee on a bitterly cold Friday in Ann Arbor. Needless to say, he has a hard life.

Landscape Interrupted

The former location of the old Pinball Pete's on South U. in Ann Arbor. It was destroyed by a fire in fall 2009.

Ritual

Biggby coffee on Liberty St. in Ann Arbor.

Message to the World

An outreach guy for a local church in Ann Arbor on Michigan's Central Campus Diag. I don't think he was amused with me.

Longing

Two patrons of Potbelly's on State and Liberty in the 2nd story windows.

I very much enjoyed having a good reason for just walking around A2 taking pictures for once, it's nice to get credit for doing what I do for fun anyway!

For this assignment I really tried to stay in the spirt of a scavenger hunt and not build scenes to shoot, but find them on my own. It was a challenge and I think for our next assignment I'll defiantly be doing more posed or staged images but I really enjoyed working that way for this assignment.

Thanks for reading.

Wire and Paper Lamps

2010-01-17T17:09:00.006-05:00

Well headlong in to the new semester!

It's always exciting to start all these new classes, but I'm particularly excited about Architecture of Objects (as I think I've mentioned about 3 times before).

We've started out with a quick project making lamps from paper and wire. As is typical for a starter Shaun Jackson project, the materials are limited, but that is just fine with me. To many options and the whole thing gets clouded real quick.

So, we are alloted,

- 6 feet of wire up to 3/32" diameter

- 2 square feet of translucent material (paper)

- 1 compact florescent bulb (to give it a tinge of sustainability!)

- 8' lamp cord

- can be a table, wall sconce, or hanging lamp

So from there, I sketched and made 7 unique 1/4" scale sketch models out of some thin wire and tracing paper. All I was really trying to do was come up with some sort of a form to chase and my model making wasn't really structured. I had sketched some ideas but found it easier to sketch new ideas as models instead of 2-d drawings.

After a desk crit with Shaun, I decided to pursue two particular designs and develop the idea at 1/2" scale paying particular attention to how the light would attach, how it would attach to the wall (for the wall sconce), how it would assemble at full scale, etc.

I picked my geometric table lamp and the simple wall sconce screen. I picked the two of them because they were the ones I felt most connected and interested in and also because Shaun like them. So I, understanding that he knew way more about this than me, took his suggestion.

The only thing I changed on the table lamp was removing the center pillar as it cast a very obvious shadow when the light was installed. This resulted in a not quite as crisp front edge unfortunately.

I developed the simple screen because of it's complete simplicity, which I really liked. I only changed the proportions of the screen from a square to a 8"x10" rectangle as a square on the wall seemed awkward.

After a brief crit with Shaun on Thursday, I've decided to pursue the simple wall screen for my full scale lamp. I'm working on it currently, aiming to be done for presentation on Tuesday morning. Once done, I'll post process pictures and the final lamp.

Thanks for reading!

Moving Forward

2010-01-06T13:41:00.003-05:00

Well, 1st day of the new semester and I'm already 2/3 of the way through my day.

I just wanted to look back at last semester briefly before I move on.I worked my butt off last semester and it really shows with my grades.

More w/ Less, A. Smart Surfaces, A. Furniture, A+.

That puts me on the Deans list for the first time, which was a small goal of mine when I started at Michigan. I'm quite proud.

Looking forward to Winter '10, I've got some interesting work ahead.

First and foremost, Architecture of Objects. I'm really excited about this class.

This course focuses on the design and construction of every day objects including lighting, furniture, and tabletop objects. A strong emphasis is placed on the relationships among the materials used in the designs and the details employed in bringing those materials together to create functional objects. Several specific manufacturing processes will be explored. This is a rigorous course and should only be considered by those truly interested in the opportunity to create resolved, full-scale designs. Work from previous iterations of this course has been featured in Interiors and Metropolis magazines and has been exhibited for a number of years a NEOCON in Chicago.

Then Contemporary Photography. Also excited about this, I really enjoy taking pictures.

A first course for students who have not completed a college level photo course. Students generate their own work in response to class discussions and motion picture viewings, which focus on still photography and the roles of photographers in society. Students must have their own adjustable digital camera, a laptop computer, and Adobe CS3 for photo editing.

Then an architecture course, CAD Fundamentals. This is less exciting but I want to go from intermediate Rhino user to advanced Rhino user.

This introductory course investigates architectural drawing using digital design tools. Lectures and readings focus on digital drawing as a generative and representational device, while exercises and laboratory sessions help students achieve a basic competency with drawing and image manipulation software. Projective and translational drawing exercises are used as a means to explore fundamental concepts shared by many digital software interfaces. Emphasis is placed on exploiting the unique capabilities presented by digital design tools, while developing a critical understanding the inherent biases and limitations of any software.

I'm also taking a history course on the early years and formation of the Eastern Orthodox Christian church. I really enjoy history courses and am trying to learn more of the history behind my religion, beyond what you can find in the Bible.

So, here we go!

Thanks for reading!

Smart Surfaces Course Progression

2009-12-15T10:53:00.002-05:00

I was just thinking about how much each project has progressed us as Smart Surfacers (it's a word now!). We started the semester with this, basically throwing sand around.

Then we progressed into heliotropism and easily tripled the complexity of our problems. We also made smartish objects. This could follow the sun (or a flashlight as it may be).

Our sun tracker.

After that we stayed at basically the same level and created a field of solar trackers that moved in unison.

Our solar tracker in action.

We then moved into a two week project and we created the light box, it was powered through solar panels and a side lit up when you walked by it. The idea was to create a field of them to walk through. This was the most frustrating two weeks I think I've ever had. (Team problems for a while)

Then of course, we moved on to the iWall (I still hate that name), which I'm really really proud of.

Basically, what I'm getting at is look how far we've come! From throwing sand to an aluminum and acrylic self adjusting passive lighting modular wall system. Not bad.

Thanks for reading.

It's Over and Done With

2009-12-14T20:50:00.003-05:00

It's sort of bittersweet, but Smart Surfaces is, for all intents and purposes, over. It's sort of anti-climatic actually. A semesters of some of the hardest work I've ever done and then it's over. Maybe for me it's just what I feel after any big project but heightened since I missed the final presentation because of a death in my family. Talk about climactic in all the wrong ways.

Anyways, our project is

The iWall Modular Light-Filtration System

The wall you see here is a modular, scalable, self-adjusting multi-aperture window, designed to optimize light flow into a room by manipulating the position of rotating wood panels. You could call it an 'automatic venetian blind', as that is the gist of the purpose. The system consists of 30 individual modules, with one panel per module, which allow a variable amount of light to pass through. The structural elements are built modularly, but circuitry elements - such as wiring - are set up in a non-modular fashion. Individual module apertures open and close in reaction to the intensity of the light that passes through the wall as detected by light-dependent resistors (LDRs), seen on the projection side, holding a relatively constant light level on the ‘interior’ of the wall at all times - this gives 'heliotropic' and 'smart' characteristics to the wall - 'surface', fitting it into the premise of the SmartSurfaces course. The actual actuation is by a grid of servos powered externally and controlled through inputs from an Arduino Mega and the LDRs. The materials used in the assembly of the individual modules were 3/16" cast acrylic cut by laser and 3/16" 6061 aluminum sheet cut by water jet.

My group presenting our passive lighting system.

The back of the modular wall.

The view through a module to the light patterns created behind the wall.

Each module had it's own servo turning the panels. Each panel was veneered with a curly maple veneer on the back and a thin layer of white polystyrene on the front. The modules are held to each other by 4 bolts per unit.

I am so incredibly happy and proud with how our project turned out. It's one of my favorite pieces I've ever been a part of. It was an incredible amount of work, and an incredible amount of time, and quite a bit of money (Grants are awesome!), and something that I can't wait to show off in my portfolio.

I really enjoyed working with my team. Neil (Engineering) basically coded and figured out how to make the arduino do what we wanted it to do. Big props to Neil. Michael (Engineering) did a little of everything really and was a big help assembling, but single handedly tackled our big final paper and kept the team on budget. Breanna (Architecture) handled the renderings, worked on the CAD design and was part of the assembly team. Taylor (Design) was Mr. Building and worked on CAD design and single handedly made the panels. Josiah (Architecture) worked primarily on assembly and the build team and made a big contribution on the laser cutting and water jet cutting of the raw acrylic and aluminum. I (Design) spent my time water jet cutting the aluminum, laser cutting a small fortune in acrylic, and assembling modules.

I really feel like we had a dream team and I would work with any person in my group again in a heart beat. I'll honestly miss seeing them almost everyday. Perhaps before next semester starts up my group would like to meet for a beer at Ashley's Pub?

I'd also like to thank the professors that ran this course, John Marshall (Art & Design), Max Shtein (Materials Science Engineering) and Karl Daubman (Architecture) all did a hell of job. Even though we sometimes felt like guinea pigs as students, the course was a great one and one that defines the Michigan difference. This was an opportunity that would never have been available to me at any other art & design school. A heartfelt thanks to all the professors.

Thanks for reading.

1 day 'till due. No pressure. It's only 3 grand.

2009-12-10T01:59:00.001-05:00

Yep, it's all due tomorrow (Friday) for Smart Surfaces baby! A few photos from module building over the past two nights.

Josiah, Breana, and I working Tuesday night glueing modules.

A module without the light controlling panel in the middle.

The army of half modules, all glued up and waiting for the plywood panels.

Best of luck to my group tomorrow night and Friday, I'll be gone because of a death in the family. They are going to kick ass.

Thanks for reading!

Canvas Shoe Design

2009-12-04T17:39:00.002-05:00

Ok, so this post has been a long time coming. I've just been to busy to post some projects from the beginning of the semester, but now have some time as I am sitting in front of a laser cutter for a few hours cutting out modules for Smart Surfaces.

Here we have the Canvas Shoes from early on in the semester in More w/ Less. I took the starting project that Jan gave us to create shoes out of paper that could support a persons weight and decided to develop my tubular paper shoes further with canvas. In this second phase of the project, we were specifically designing shoes for one of our class mates.

Enter Mallory.

I interviewed Mallory on her shoe preferences, foot size, likes/dislikes, and found a few main things she wanted in shoes,

-she enjoyed simple flats with a little experimentation to them

-organic, flowing, intertwined shoes drew her curiosity in

-a engaging sole print was a plus

-cooler color for the major color

-comfort

So with that in mind, I did a little research into where flexibility and, more importantly, where rigidity was needed for a correct human gate. I also read up on arch support and designing for comfort and impact resistance.

We would be critiqued on how comfortable the shoes were for the users, how long they lasted, and meeting the users overall needs and desires.

Mallory modeling my shoes for her.

I developed the rolled tube design of my paper shoes because of their incredible strength and the ability to add flexibility and rigidity where it was needed. When the short tubes were glued to the sole they naturally had flexibility against one another, but by simply strategically glueing tubes together, I could create rigid sections to provide support for Mallory's arches and give her a platform to push off of when walking.

I made the tubes out of a canvas often used in awnings and on boats called Sunbrella, I chose it because it was waterproof, highly fade resistant and just as importantly, soft to the touch. The sunbrella was cut into thin strips, rolled, and glued. I then attached each roll to the sole. The sole was made from a combination of layers of Sunbrella fabric and bristol board. The bristol board was used to keep the wearer from feeling the tubes through the fabric.

Assembly.

Rolled Sunbrella Tubes attached to the base of the sole.

The Sunbrella tubes had a nice tendency to compress under walking weight, which enabled me to provide the user (Mallory) with a nice level of comfort when walking.

The tubes that make up the outsole.

I used navy blue Sunbrella because Mallory liked cooler colors on her shoes, but threw in some yellow to appeal to Mallory's desire for a little flair and experimentation. For the color I used a handkerchief with a white and black paisley pattern printed on it and hand sewed it to the footbeds. I used this to add color to both the footbed and to the weave that made up the uppers. I specifically chose to weave the uppers because of Mallory's desire for flowing, interconnected footwear and because of the stretch and flexibility it would offer for Mallory's foot to stay in the footbed comfortably.

The yellow handkerchief sewn onto the footbed.

The weave that made up the uppers of the flats.

To provide arch support I added taller tubes to the sole under the foots arches. These were roughly 1/8th of an inch taller than the rest of the tubes and when the user stood or walked in the shoes, the taller tubes pushed the footbeds up and provide support for the arches. I felt that providing arch support through the soles instead of building up the footbeds was a more material efficient and more effective way of providing support when walking or standing.

Mallory, enjoying the early fall sun in her new flats.

Overall, Mallory was happy with the shoes I designed for her. I was able to provide her with everything she was looking for and was able to do it efficiently materials wise. The pair of shoes used only 2/3rds of a yard of Sunbrella and was still able to provide comfort, support and looks.

Thanks for reading.

IT FITS!

2009-12-04T10:30:00.002-05:00

The planning has payed off! The aluminum and the acrylic fit together! If they didn't fit perfectly our Smart Surfaces group was out almost $1,000 in aluminum and acrylic. Luckily, we are not screwed!

They fit, friction fit even!

Water Jet Cutting!

2009-12-04T10:03:00.001-05:00

We started cutting our aluminum triangle faces for Smart Surfaces out of our large (4'x8') sheet of 3/16th aluminum yesterday. I say started because the entire cut is going to take 3 hours and use 180 lbs of the abrasive material and we ran out of abrasive material. Sooo, we get to finish it up on Monday.

Either way, the water jet cutter is one of the most useful machines in the Digital Fab Lab in my opinion. The quality of the cuts are nearly finished quality and it does a beautiful job of intricate cuts. Also, the Fab Lab guys are great, they know what they are doing and are fun to work with. Highly recommended.

The aluminum sheet in the machine, pre cutting.

Cutting a piece out. It's quite a machine to watch, lots of high pressure water, bubbles, and noise!

A cut piece. Just a little sanding on the edges and it's ready to go into a wall module.

At this time we are also laser cutting out the acrylic sections of the module, we have 3 4'x8' sheets of acrylic, so lots and lots of laser cutting ahead of us!

Thanks for reading!

Hey Look Ma! A Module!

2009-11-30T20:59:00.002-05:00

The prototype of our module, of which for the final there will be 36 of them, stacked.

We're working on small final revisions before our final order for materials (acrylic & aluminum). This upcoming week and weekend will be a whirlwind of water jet cutting aluminum, laser cutting acrylic, glueing, veneering and all manner of little problems that we are trying to anticipate but are sure to pop up.

11 days until the final project is due. Gulp.

Testing 1,2,3...can anybody hear me?

2009-11-30T20:58:00.001-05:00

We spent last weeks Smart Surfaces class period testing our LDRs (light sensitive things) and getting a reading of how sensitive they are and generating ideas on how to arrange our modules in the final iteration. We came up with some cool graphs, which I won't take time to explain since I doubt many are interested in what exactly they told us, but none the less they look nice!

This was our super scientific controlled experiment, stray foam core and cardboard. Funny thing was 2 designers and 1 architect set up the experiment to gather data for the engineers (I scoff at your scientific method!)

Photo From John Marshall's Flickr

Thanks for reading.

Solar Surface Sketch Model

2009-11-05T21:00:00.000-05:00

Yea for group work! After Josiah, Mike, Neil and I made the structure yesterday, Brieana and Taylor coded it to work this afternoon! It sounds like the coding was easy, but I'd rather build with czech toys than code any day of the week!

Thanks for reading!

Building What We Can

2009-11-04T23:01:00.001-05:00

We'll we're in final groups of course now. I really like my group, we work well together and all get along which is even more appreciated after the last group!

Smart Surfaces Team One is (since I've not posted on it before)

Josiah - Architect

Brieana - Architect

Michael - Materials Science

Neil - Materials Science

Taylor - Design

I'm excited to work with all of them.

Today we got to work on prototyping something to show roughly what we want to do with our project. It's good to make something, it's what I as a design student love to do. Book work sucks, working with your hands is the best.

It's also nice to have a doable project at this point. We've redefined the project twice now. First idea was, well three ideas, which we ran by the class (no one liked any of them) and we moved on in a different direction. (The first ideas were things like making a solar stadium or retrofiting Michigan Stadium with solar panel bleachers). We then moved onto solar umbrellas and really developed the idea quite far and had a great presentation that really went over why these solar umbrellas were awesome, what they would do, why they were needed and such.

The presentation went over great. Then why do you ask did we redefine the project a second time?

Eugene Shteyn. (The guy sitting in the chair in the picture above)

This guy single handedly saved our project by making us really think about it. Eugene is the Director of Intellectual Property and Standards at HP and teaches as Stanford. He went through finding high quality problems that are implementable. We also went through reverse brainstorming, which is basically finding problems with solutions not solutions to problems. We had to think up 70 real problems with our project. It was surprisingly easy and I think it really overwhelmed all of us how flawed our project was.

70 problems with the solar umbrellas. That's me looking back!

But after working on it for a week, I think we've really figured out how to simplify our project and make it work for a gallery presentation. Yep, gallery presentation. The final projects must fit in a 8'x8'x8' space.

Also, this new project is easier to build.

Unfortunately I'm not sure how best to describe our final project now, but it's going to be great and basically still deal with shade but in a simplified and much cooler interactive form. Basically there will be a surface of solar panels above you in some public place and when you move under them they flip over. So as you walk around under it, the flipping follows you around! Cool!

So picture of what we build today will have so suffice until I borrow/pirate a better description from one of my groups members blog!

As part of the class we've got these random Check metal toys. Kind of like an erector set, but cooler because it's Euro! We had 'play time' and built with the toys today. It was great. This post is titled Building What We Can because we are waiting on our materials from our $500 dollar prototyping budget and we really wanted to have something to show for Friday.

Those are the 'solar panels' on the axis. It was surprisingly fun, best group meeting yet, because we got to build stuff with toys! Great!

CNC Machining the Magnet Stool

2009-10-28T15:42:00.003-04:00

This morning I (and Marc, one of the Fab Lab guys) CNC machined out the parts for my magnet stool in the Digital Fabrication lab here at U of M. It was great, I love the large budget of a huge research university! Lots of cool tech, and lots of it in the Fab Lab!

Being my first time on the machines it took a little bit to set up my file (only 5 hours!) because I had not quite optimized my Rhino file to be machined with MasterCam (the cnc software). But hey, it worked and it's awesome! I'll be sanding and glueing up tomorrow.

Drilling out some magnet holes.

That's the incredibly helpful Marc. Marc is awesome.

The finished cuts are quite nice, I'll be sanding them with some ridiculously super fine grit sand paper and just regular yellow legal paper (a tip from a friend who worked for Steelcase) for a super smooth and finished edges.

Thanks for reading!

Mobile Kitchen Concepts

2009-10-28T15:31:00.002-04:00

In More w/ Less we're working on mobile kitchens as groups currently. They have to fit in a 2'x2'x5' space and cook a full meal. In the words of Jan Henrick (our prof), "I have to be able to cook a meal on them or you fail." So no pressure. Oh and we have 2.5 weeks to make a functioning prototype. Meaning a working kitchen in 2.5 weeks. Again, no pressure.

Our group is trying to make a kitchen that is minimal and portable as possible while still being a useable kitchen. It's exciting!

So far, we've filled up a few white boards and large pieces of paper with concepts and sketches.

Below is a few selected images from the concept meetings.

Working out what needs to be in a kitchen.

Drawing kitchen work spaces at full scale to get a stronger idea of scale and usable space.

Thanks for reading!

The Design Zorse

2009-10-26T21:10:00.003-04:00

My professor Jan-Henrick came up with this in class last week to demonstrate how some people in the class were falling behind and simply not keeping up with work. Not pictured is the person trampled and bleeding and crying behind the zorse (half horse, half zebra).

A few of us are riding it and taking control, most of us are getting bounced around on the zorses hind legs, and the rest of us are getting dragged along, face in the zorses hind quarters.

And then they're the dead ones crying blood. Yep, Jan is crazy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Design Zorse!

"Your thinking, 'this guy is crazy'. Yes. I am." Jan-Henrick Anderson

Thanks for reading!

Week 4 and the Light Box in Smart Surfaces

2009-10-25T22:17:00.004-04:00

Well, it's done.

Pretty much, we created a light box that is motion activated when someone walks by. Our group envisioned this project as an installation piece where there would be large scale deployment of these cubes in a large public area (like U of M's Diag). As people move between the cubes in their daily lives the light would follow them through the cubes. Yep, we made an art piece that makes the sun an ancillary part, it's got solar panels on top to charge it during the day.

This was a trying project, and I'm honestly very glad we are done with it. Our team didn't always work well together and I even made the front page of the Smart Surfaces website ranting about it last post. Opps/Nice.

We had Julian Bleecker from the Near Future Laboratory come this week and talk to us about Undisciplinaryism. He commented on each of our projects, but unfortunately seemed to have little to say about our groups projects.

Building the box.

Setting up the wires.

The windows are acyclic that slide down into slots in the box and are then lit by a row of colored LED's from the bottom. Patterns were laser scored into the panes to provide opportunities to light to catch.

(From rootoftwo (John Marhall) on Flickr)

The blue LED's worked very well, and it made the bubbles pane of acrylic look great.

We're onto our final groups and final projects now. I like my group, everyone seems good so far! We presented ideas for our projects today in class and it seemed from all the presentations that the professors (John Marshall, Max Shtein, Karl Daubman) were not extremely excited or happy with our ideas. I'm tempted to ask what they were really hoping for or thinking we might come up. They honestly seemed disappointed. We'll see.

Thanks for reading!

More pictures at Smart Surfaces Task 4 and John Marshall's Flickr.

Magnetic Chair (in process)

2009-10-25T21:48:00.004-04:00

My magnetic chair is coming along full swing. I've had some hiccups of course, like the bending plywood not bending nearly as tightly as I was lead to believe it would and instead snapping. But over all, I'm ok with the bending ply not working, it was really not a very nice material to look at when layered and the whole reason I wanted to use layered veneers was for the edge quality of layered veneers.

Instead I am CNC machining the legs (well, the entire chair) out of a nice plywood from Fingerlee Lumber here in Ann Arbor (a great local lumberyard, highly recommended). I've got time on the CNC machine tomorrow morning and I'm quite excited, it will be my first time on these machines. I'm so thankful that Michigan has the world class Taubman Architecture college in the same building at the Art & Design school. Because of their huge budget and big money donors (namely the schools name sake, Taubman), they have an impressive amount of tech that I'm able to get my hands on. I love it and kinda wish the Architecture school had a design program as well. Design in the hands of artists is withering out sadly.

The CNC routers. Photo from Julian Bleecker's Flickr.

The other snafu was the magnets I had ordered online turned out to be from a company in Hong Kong. In my haste to order them at the end of a class period, I neglected to check where they were shipping from. So for the chair that I wanted to keep the sourcing local, I end up buying product from Hong Kong. The stupid things aren't even here yet. I ended up buying some neodymium magnets from Stadium Hardware here in Ann Arbor, again highly recommended.

I've worked out where all the magnets lay and will be embedded and I am quite happy with how it should come all together. Below are some screen shots from Rhino of my model and cut files. (I decided not to take the time now and render them nicely, so screen shots it is for now!)

The cut file. I'm cutting 3/4" plywood and sandwiching the pieces to create the size needed. The circles are various drill holes for the friction and magnetic held wooden rods that will hold the chair together while in its 'up' position or the magnet holes for the carrying 'down' mode.

The chair up on the left and the collapsed carrying state on the right. The hole in the back of the seat acts as a handle for carrying the chair.

Another view.

I'll post some process pictures of the CNC and the resulting pieces tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

The Bending Ply Has Landed!

2009-10-13T15:46:00.010-04:00

So, as I start to type this, I've realized I have not posted a thing about Making Furniture! So, here we go then!

The class started with lots of tutorials on how to use wood chisels, make traditional joints, make models and cut stuff with japanese saws. After this requisite training part, we're getting to have some fun. We're working on our first projects now, which oddly are our midterms projects.

We are making stools or tables that fit in a 18" x 18" box. It's interesting to see all the different ways classmates are taking, but I'm working on creating a collapsable chair held together by friction fits and magnets. Below is my cardboard sketch model of the chair when in its up configuration.

The back will be only 4 inches tall, really more of a way to keep you from sliding off the back. The legs and back all remove and then snap together and to the seat base by embeded magnets. The seat and back are going to be made from some super nice plywood with the magnets embeded through CNC machining of space for them. I am embedding some aluminum stock with drilled with holes in the seat and back for a metal accent. The top and bottom of both the seat back and seat bottom will be covered with a light colored Maple veneer.

The legs will be made from bending plywood and covered with the same light colored Maple veneer.

The aluminum stock.

The maple veneer.

My sheet of bending ply!

Installation Project

2009-10-13T14:29:00.002-04:00

So, we're almost done with project 4. We've had two weeks on this project and it's is incredibly open ended, well kinda. The project is,

This exercise prompts you to propose, develop, deconstruct and implement an idea based on the principles of an interactive, heliotropic smartsurface. The smartsurface concept should constitute a set of functionalities that otherwise exist in 3-dimensional space, collapsed into an ostensibly 2-dimensional space, thereby gaining additional functionality and/or appeal.

From SmartSurfaces.net

The example in class of a ostensibly 2-d surface that is really 3-d was the iPhone. Lots of different layers go into the screen of that device, but they are squished together to create what it for most intents, 2-d.

Well, our group, and and other groups I believe, have taken this project and pretty much run with it. Our group is making an installation piece. Basically, there are a field of human size cubes in an open area. The cubes are lined with acrylic and LED's that are turned on by a heat sensitive motion sensor. As you move by the LEDs light up and fade as you move away. As you move through the field the trail of light follows you. The interaction with the lights changes as other people move through the field with you.

So basically, we stuffed the iPhone and made an art piece. Sweet!

I'm sorry, I don't have a single picture to share currently, my little point and shoot camera has basically gone from being on the fritz to officially freaking out and not working. Since I don't carry my big DSLR around with me, I don't have any pictures...yet.

So stay tuned! Pictures to follow!

In all honesty, it's been a very frustrating and trying one and a half weeks with the current group and I'll be happy to be done with this project, we don't seem to work extremely well together and we have some stubborn group members and we have been butting heads. It's been interesting.

Thanks for reading!

Extension Cord Lamp

2009-10-13T13:40:00.004-04:00

Just wanted to show this, I found it on Core 77 and loved it! I wish I had thought of this!

It's by Craighton Berman.

Bendable LEDs Looking For an Application? Now This Sounds Like A Problem For Smart Surfaces!

2009-10-07T21:31:00.000-04:00

Via Core77

"LED manufacturer Bivar's new, flexible Light Pipe System, a bendable LED tube ideal "for outdoor and rugged applications, which require greater brightness and light transfer capacity, sturdy design and more flexibility."

Hmm. I like this. I wonder if my group can get our hands on some for our project...

Even More Heliotropic Systems!

2009-09-30T16:36:00.003-04:00

So this week was a bit different in Smart Surfaces as we spent last Friday in class learning Digital Project, a software program that is a pain to work with but kinda cool when it does work.

Sitting in class, making Theo Jansen walking leg machines in Digital Project. Note, watch the Theo Jansen TED talk I linked just above. It's amazing.

Our objective this week,

You are to make a heliotropic field that is responsive to the movement of the sun. Use this project to build on previous work and to refine your understanding of a heliotropic system. Is it possible that the shadow of one cell might affect its neighbor? Is it possible for cells work together to share the available sunlight? The power copy demonstration developed a simple form and framework that uses information from the solar chart. Working with your team, you are to develop a speculative design in Digital Project and a prototype array built with your Arduino materials.

This should be presented as:

An animation using screen shots from Digital Project.
An operational prototype of 3 working / related cells.

Obviously the digital representation can include a larger field of components and demonstrate their relationships while the Arduino mock-up will demonstrate the operation of a few cells.

So, with that in mind, this is what we're working on. A field of cells that follow the sun using data on where the sun is from Excel and Digital Project. We're also designing something akin to flower petals that open as the day starts to collect sun and close in the evening.

Initial Ideas and Drawings

Assembly of our field.

The field, these are pulled by two servos to follow the sun.

Assembly of the servo connections.

Our field, moving, controlled by the Arduino.

Cutting out the petals for the collectors on the laser cutter.

Our group is meeting again tonight for final set up to get everything working. I'll be taking pictures and posting soon!

Thanks for reading!

Arduino Heliotropic Code

2009-09-30T16:35:00.001-04:00

This is the code from our second project, the light source finder. Our code was mostly derived from the Arduino meets Processing project and was pretty much figured out by Michael Mathieu, a senior in MSE.

Just a note for anyone who's never looked at code before, anything inside of or after / is a comment to tell the human reader what it does.

* ap_LDRAiming

* Reads an analog input from the input pin and sends the value

* followed by a line break over the serial port.

* This file is part of the Arduino meets Processing Project:

* For more information visit http://www.arduino.cc.

* copyleft 2005 by Melvin Ochsmann for Malm� University

#include

Servo myServo;

// variables for input pin and control LED

int PhotoA = 3;

int PhotoB = 4;

int PhotoC = 5;

int LEDpin = 13;

int pos = 0;

// variable to store the value

int valueA = 0;

int valueB = 0;

int valueC = 0;

// a threshold to decide when the LED turns on

int threshold = 750;

void setup(){

// declaration of pin modes

pinMode(PhotoA, INPUT);

pinMode(PhotoB, INPUT);

pinMode(PhotoC, INPUT);

pinMode(LEDpin, OUTPUT);

myServo.attach(9);

// begin sending over serial port

Serial.begin(9600);

}

void loop(){

// read the value on analog input

valueA = analogRead(PhotoA);

valueB = analogRead(PhotoB);

valueC = analogRead(PhotoC);

// if value greater than threshold turn on LED

if (valueA <>

// print out value over the serial port

Serial.print(valueA);

Serial.print(",");

Serial.print(valueB);

Serial.print(",");

Serial.print(valueC);

// and a signal that serves as seperator between two values

Serial.print(";");

// Checks if right is greater than left, if so move to right.

if (valueB > (valueC +20))

// +20 is the deadzone, so it wont jiggle back and forth.

{

if (179 > pos)

pos++;

myServo.write(pos);

}

// Checks if left is greater than right, if so move to left.

if (valueC > (valueB +20))

// +20 is the deadzone, so it wont jiggle back and forth.

{

if (pos > 1)

pos -= 1;

myServo.write(pos);

}

// wait for a bit to not overload the port

delay(10);

}

The code includes a serial input that we used to judge whether or not our solar detection was working properly in a numerical sense. By slowing the program down to a delay of 250, we were able to tweak the code in order to ensure that the readings were proper, and that we could utilize the changes in direction properly.

The biggest issue for our group was ambient lighting, which we were able to counteract with a shade of sorts Allison and I made while in design, but in final display we could not, because of the amount of ambient light in the presentation area rendered our shade useless. We set our thresholds slightly too high for the situation that we were in, but it worked amicably for the purpose of presentation.

Thanks for reading.

Smart Surfaces and Heliotropic Systems

2009-09-30T16:33:00.002-04:00

A quick update on week 2-3. We've moved along with arduino learning how to program it using photocells and servo motors to follow a light source, which is quite cool actually, I'm still at the "gee-whiz! It moves!" stage of physical computing. I really think they should teach physical computing in Physics 240 (electromagnetic physics and includes circuits) and Engin 101 (programing). Learning how to manipulate code to actually have a physical result is much more engaging than the same old compile, run, debug, compile, run, "hello world!'.

Anyway, all of this is leading into heliotropic systems (following the sun, like sunflowers).

Our light source tracker!

The bread board and all the wires inside the base.

We had two servo motors moving our contraption. One on the horizontal (x-axis) making it rotate and follow side to side and the other on the vertical (y-axis) following up and down.

For a quick video of it mostly working (too much ambient light, we set our light threshold a bit to high). Check out my group member, Damien's, flickr site here. Her blog can be found here.

Smartsurfaces day 2. Lots o' Arduino!

2009-09-18T18:32:00.002-04:00

Just got back from day 2 of Smart Surfaces (it's a weekly, all day Friday course). It was a fun day, quite interesting and all new for me. We worked with Arduino over the course of the week on our own and then today learned some slightly more advanced things.

We started with LDR cells (photoresistor cells).

LDR lessons here.

The arduino and breadboard for the LDR circuit.

We then moved on to H-bridges. An H-bridge is an electronic circuit which enables a voltage to be applied across a load in either direction. These circuits allow DC motors to run both forwards and backwards. H-bridges are generally used to reverse the polarity of a motor, but can also be used to 'brake' the motor, where the motor comes to a sudden stop.

HBridge lessons here.

The h-bridge set up.

Finally we moved onto servo motors.

Servo lessons here.

The servo motor set up.

All this learning was set up towards our exercise for the day, making photoresistor cells follow a light source. Our team used the photo cells, and the servo motors to accomplish this goal. We didn't really use the h-bridge because we only had an hour to accomplish the whole thing. I don't have any picture even because we were working so diligently. Our homework this week though is to get back together and perfect our designs so I'll have pictures once were done with that. This class is so interesting and actually quite fun!

Last week I had commented on the different knowledge basis that the different students had and today it was apparent again. One of the engineering students (whose name now escapes me, sorry!), knew what to do with the coding side and really was the director for our team today on the electronic side of things. I helped to put together some circuits and build the base that our servo motors moved on and the housing for our photo cells to thus follow light from. It was fun!

I'll have more later, once we meet again.

Just a point, for anyone remotely interested in this or any interdisciplinary work on design, engineering, check out the Smart Surfaces website. It's so much more than a simple course site.

Thanks for reading!

My workspace for the day. Glamourous, I know.

Arduino and making LED's blink! It's all so exciting!

2009-09-18T11:21:00.002-04:00

Well, we've learned basic Arduino. Made a LED light up and blink! We used these lessons, here, if anyone is interested and we had the basic Arduino starter kit.

An Arduino board.

And then we had some fun with the RGB LED's. Video is below. I'll post more about my thoughts on this later. In the mean time, I'm getting some sleep!

Final hook ups.

Thanks for reading!

Day 1 of Smart Surfaces.

2009-09-16T14:26:00.003-04:00

Well, this is going to be a really interesting course.

I won't go into every detail but, like I had thought, it was interesting working with students from other disciplines. Well, actually, the architects in the course had methodologies pretty similar to the designers. A very hands on, try it and make prototypes, it's ok to fail while you work out the final design kind of thinking. It was cool to see and it makes total sense that both the architecture school and the art & design school share a building. The engineering prof, Max Shtein, made an interesting point about the disparity of knowledges that the different disciplines had, say he started talking about 1, 2 and 3 point perspective, only 2/3rds of the class (designers and architects)would really understand what he was talking about. But if he asked us to differentiate some equation, probably only 1/3rd (engineers) would know what to do. ( Wonder if can do that anymore, doubt it).

On an unrelated note, go to Professor Shtein's page (link on his name) and check out his picture, looks like a high school yearbook photo. Love it.

We had a mini one day exercise where we were split into teams (2 engineers, 2 designers, and 2 architects)and we had to move sand from location to location (using gravity) leaving a certain amount of sand at each location. It was actually quite fun, and used materials that we creative types are quite familiar with, cardboard and duct tape primarily. The sand started up high and worked it's way down to the different locations. We were judged on things like efficency, durability and spectacle. We went big on the spectacle part. We made a sling shot to shoot the sand up to a funnel that divided the sand out and moved it through tunnels to the different locations. It was awesome. So much potential for failure, but so cool.

Testing the angle sand would slide down cardboard at.

Matt and I were responsible for the slingshot, we tested the tension needed to throw a cup full of sand 4 feet. Answer, quite a bit.

Building the sand holders, like 5 minutes before we presented. It was tight, but worked!

So our design worked, but we were penalized for having to much human interaction. Basically we ran out of time to build a support structure for our funnel and tunnels and had to hold it up ourselves. Out of the 4 teams, ours was actually the only one that really worked and successfully got the sand to each location. I think that was because, besides the slingshot, we actually kept our design simple. Since we were working with cardboard, we kept the whole thing simple with minimal moving parts and thus, once the sand was in the funnel there was less of a chance for cascading failure. You know, once we got past the whole flinging sand thing.

We are now moving on to Arduino, a computer processing language I think. I've had no experience with this at all and I'm a bit nervous/excited. We have to make LED's light up for homework. Here we go!

Thanks for reading!

Welcome to Smart Surfaces! Now, what is it?

2009-09-16T14:25:00.000-04:00

Smartsurfaces offers a collaborative, project-based learning experience in which artists, designers, architects and engineers come together to build physical systems and structural surfaces that have the capability to adapt to information and environmental conditions. The course operates as a multidisciplinary, hands-on think-tank where participants pool their knowledge and skill sets to work together to produce environmentally sound and socially responsible projects. Public exhibition of these funded projects provides an opportunity for participants to present their work to a wider audience and to review their achievements. Projects make use of the resources available to all participating university units, such as: parametric modeling, digital fabrication, networked sensors, micro-controller programming, and energy harvesting using solar cells and nano-structured materials. This course is a collaborative endeavor led by three professors who will advise and contribute to all team projects. Teams will make use of visiting lecturers, specialists, site visits, and relevant stakeholder organizations. (From U of M Art & Design Fall 2009 elective courses)

I'm extremely proud to be in this course and I'm excited to be working with students from other disciplines. It will be quite interesting to work with engineers again specifically, I spent 3 years working on a B.S. in mechanical engineering here at Michigan before I realized that I absolutely hated engineering and was miserable. I then transferred over to Michigan art & Design to study product design. I realize now that I really disliked the engineering way of thinking about anything. A formulaic, only one answer way of thinking. Now this is perfect (and needed) on say, making sure a building stays up, or a plane doesn't fall apart. It just wasn't for me. Either way, it will be interesting collaborating with the other students.

Paper Shoes

2009-09-15T16:58:00.007-04:00

We've started out in More w/ Less making paper shoes that support our own weight. Well paper sandals really. It's all really a prototyping exercise for making real shoes out of recycled materials. I concentrated on making mine out of similar strips of material, partially out of a desire to give myself some constraints and partially out of a desire to be able to mass produce the building blocks of my design! On all of the shoes I concentrated on the structural design of the soles supporting the three main pressure areas from human feet. Our heels (a big point pressure), the ball of your foot, and the big toe (which is used a pushing off point in our strides). I tried to concentrate material around these areas.

I'll show my favorite and strongest of my three shoes first. I built them using 12"x1" strips of sketch book paper and rolling them in to small, medium and large cylinders and gluing the individual cylinders together. It created a very strong and robust platform which was still flexible for the foot to move with. I was very happy with the sole of these shoes and my class and professor seemed to appreciate them as well for their aesthetic value (no one else had anything like mine) and strength.

The second set of shoes, a material heavy explosion of zig zaged bristol board cut into 12"x1/2" strips. They were ok on strength ( the sides were prone to buckling if you stood off center) and just looked cluttered.

The third set of sandals were a direct response to the second pair, where I used lots of material on both of the other sets, I wanted to use less material here. These are 12"x1/2" bristol board strips, folded into layered triangles. I was pretty happy, with these, except for the heel. In a late night and I was tired oversight, the triangles of the heel extend out from under the sole piece and really break up the familiar lines of the shoe. It really hurts the design. I shouldn't have been doing these at the late hour I was though.

The big problem with my sandals was that again because it was late and I was tired, I didn't think of how to attach the straps for your feel to the soles until after the soles were finished. It produced much less than stellar results. I'm not even going to show the pictures. Jan was instructing me to really spend some time looking at my cylinder design and figuring out where to take if from here specifically pertaining to large cylinder, small cylinder layout and integrating straps.

It's interesting to look at the issue with the straps and how I got sucked into viewing only the soles as the major issue to design around in paper shoes and apply that to my design process as a whole. I think I'm really missing a step where partially through each step (say, sketching, sketch models, prototyping etc) I take a step back and see where I'm headed and try to identify problem areas. I'll be working on improving on that this semester.

Thanks for reading!

Back to school kiddies!

2009-09-08T11:28:00.004-04:00

Ah, summer went so fast. It was busy, and I'll get you up to speed quickly.

Moved back to my parents house (Grand Rapids, Mi), got married (best part of summer), went to Cozumel, Mexico, moved to Ann Arbor with my new wife (Kara Mia!), worked full time at bike shop, started school today. It was a great, busy summer. I'm not sure if I want it to end!

But either way, it's back to school! Design!

I've had one class so far, More w/ Less. It's a sustainable design course with Jan Hendrick, one of my profs from last semester. I'm quite excited about it.

My courses are

More w/ Less Jan Hendrick-Anderson

This course focuses on developing a sustainable material future; how material use and form are integral to designing objects, and how to design with a keen eye on resources, energy and environmental impact. The visual/physical form language of sustainability is an important component. The focus is hands-on with direct approaches to reducing the carbon footprint of objects by way of planning, fabricating, testing and evaluating functional prototypes. This practical approach is supported by readings and course literature, discussions and demonstrations.

Smart Surfaces (I am super excited / nervous about this course) John Marshall

Making Furniture John Baird

Students carry on the tradition of propping up our skeletons by considering ergonomic, economic, esthetic and engineering aspects of making furniture -- as preparation to designing and building well-crafted chairs, tables, or other furnishings that entice the eye, tease the mind, and cradle the body. Students with skills in 3-D computer modeling may use 3-D models for visualization and for cutting out parts on a computer-controlled 4-axis mill. A refresher on joinery and characteristics of wood provided. Some "sketching" in 3-D materials to aid invention of furniture ideas used. The final project is one or more pieces of furniture that manifest a vigorous conceptual and formal synergy.

ADP 3 Tech/Environment Joe Trumpey

This is the last of the A(rt)D(esign)P(erspectives) courses that I'm required to take. I've heard good and bad about this course, it is either amazing, or a total waste of time. Tales of making friends with trees have reached my ears. We'll see.

Thanks for reading.

I didn't even know they gave A+ at Michigan.

2009-05-11T22:18:00.003-04:00

Well all the grades are in. It was a hell of a semester. I am way better for it and much smarter than 5 months ago. I ended with a Pass, B-, B, B+, and the elusive A+. Heck yeah, Designer Bootcamp! Worked my butt off and it payed off big time.

I'm working at Terra Trike for a month and a half before the wedding June 19th. I'm really thankful to have the job with the way the economy is. I'm both glad and annoyed that I have 2 more years of school left. I've got 5 under my belt already thanks to the engineering to art/design transfer. I am so incredibly ready to be done with school, my younger sister even graduates this weekend. I am really happy for her and really wish I was graduating too. I've had my college experience, I don't care about parties and how much you drank last night one bit. It gets old sometimes having classes with people who were in middle school when I was graduating high school. Most people I have meet at Michigan A&D are great, mature, creative people who I'm very glad I know. But man oh man, there are some exceptions. Thanks to all the good ones.

On the other hand, I'm kinda glad I'm not graduating right now. The economy is in the toilet, it's trying to climb out, and is making progress, but it's certainly not in a good state right now. I'm glad that I don't have to start my career right now and have two more years of school for the economy to right itself. I have friends who graduated last year and this year who are still looking for jobs in their fields. I don't envy them right now.

Anyways, if I do anything A&D related over the summer, I'll post it. Such as, when I get a free moment (read after the wedding) I'll post pictures of the finished ABS plastic salt and pepper grinders. They are awesome.

Thanks for reading!

The Semester From Hell

2009-04-30T22:06:00.003-04:00

Well grades are rolling in one by one. So far I've got a B, a B+ and a Pass. I'm waiting for my last two classes.

My sophomore review went pretty well, Ed West (a professor) only called me lazy 3 times, he has a bit of a rep for being a jerk and he lived up to it. I'll update on that when I get all my grades back and give a big semester run down. I'm so relieved to be done with that semester, it was really hell and shall from here on be referred to as the "Semester From Hell". Yep, crafted by the devil himself (OK, maybe not that bad, but I didn't sleep much that's for sure).

On a good note, I'm done with the CFC series! They are a poorly conceived series of classes on Concept, Form and Context. Michigan could do so much with these classes, but really squanders the opportunity. Like so much at Michigan, your experience with a course is so heavily biased by which professor you get, each one runs what is supposed to be the same course, differently by section. It's really just luck if you get a good section. I got a good one for CFC 3, and that made the class better, but these classes could be so much more!

I am back home at my parents now (Grand Rapids, Mi) and working at Terra Trike again for a few months before the wedding on June 19th. It's really nice to be back, I can ride my bike, see my fiancee (the best part by far), and not constantly think about school.

Thanks for reading!

Pooper Scooper Ideation

2009-04-22T12:12:00.006-04:00

Last night I decided to change my pooper scooper idea for Designer Bootcamp, and that's after working out a different idea pretty well, but never being happy with it at all. It was best described as a collapsable hiking pole with a fish net on the end. It was for the elderly. It was boring, and unimaginative.

So I changed my target consumer. Namely to one that could bend over easily.

I'm working on a design that is A: inspired by existing designer home appliances and tools such as the Dirt Devil Kone, and B: takes it form language from the word 'scoop'. I'm aiming the product at young, urban 20 and 30 somethings who are living space challenged, style savvy, environmentally conscious dog lovers.

Just some ideation from last night.

Thanks for reading. I'll post how it turns out!

CyCle. An Everyday Solution to an Everyday City.

2009-04-21T20:45:00.006-04:00

I presented my commuter bicycle concept to my Sketching Ideas class yesterday. It went really well. I'll let my images speak for my design and the target consumer.

This project was conceived, rendered and presented in a little over 3 weeks.

Oh, the presentation went perfectly. I was told I had a great idea and certainly the best delivery of the idea. One classmate commented, that my presentation convinced him that he needed one too! Which, is good!

Thanks for reading!

Two Weeks.

2009-04-11T15:24:00.008-04:00

Phew, only 2 weeks left this semester. Everything is happening all at once, each studio has a project due in the next week and then I've got a week to really pull my sophomore review together.

I realized looking back through my posts this semester that the only class I'm really blogging about is CFC 3 and Designer Bootcamp (to a lesser extent). That's really a shame, because all my classes have been really interesting and challenging.

I don't think I've really said much about the myPod since the first model, but I'm finished with it now. I don't have any pictures of the finished model, it went into a display case pretty quick. So I'm waiting to get it out and take some pictures. You can check it out at my website, umich.edu/~petemh. I'll probably end up posting the finished images there first.

I'll just get you up to speed on Dimensional Languages (a design semiotics course) and Sketching Ideas here quick.

For dimensional Lang., we spent the first half of the semester working on buttons. I felt we were kind of spinning our wheels, the project should have lasted half as long, but I believe now that I felt that way because I was never really engaged with the project and never completely understood what Jan Hendrick (the prof) was trying to teach us. For the last month we've been working on salt and pepper shakers, or grinders in my case, that are inspired by prose, poetry and factual text on salt and pepper. It's been one of the most challenging project I've ever worked on, but I am really learning allot about the intimacy and language of form.

I spent most of the project trying to encompass both a salt and pepper grinder in one form, but really got stuck and never really moved past something that looked like a finger. So, I completely reworked the design this past week, working on grinders that for one, separated salt and pepper like normal, and worked on a squeezing motion. You squeeze the lever, it turns the grinder. I'm ironing out the form details this weekend and I'm going to have the most promising forms printed on the rapid prototyping machines from Rhino and pick my final model from there. I'm really excited about this project.

My first sketch model.

The creepy finger version. The whole thing rotated about the cut lines. Salt came from the top, pepper the bottom. The grand failure of this model is that I have to explain that to you.

Even if the idea did suck, I didn't let it go. Here are Rhino models I pretty much wasted my time on. Oh well, learn from your mistakes!

Early squeeze versions.

In Sketching Ideas, we've spent the whole semester drawing. Not still life or figure drawing, but drawing out ideas so as to effectively portray your concepts. It's pretty much an industrial design sketching course. Which is just perfect. It's taught by a designer for Ford, Chiwei Lee, who is pretty awesome himself. I've never had as much work for a course as I have for this one, but I am certainly getting better at sketching.

I'm working on my final design project for Sketching Ideas, we got to define our own project. I'm working on designing a commuter bicycle for people in the city and am trying to look at the bicycle and it's accessories as a system, integrating everything together to work as one perfect machine. Of course, being a biker, I am in love with this project. It's a hell of a lot of drawing though.

Oh and for our final project in Designer Bootcamp, we are all working on a few different projects as a class, I picked redesigning a pooper scooper. I'm not as invested in this project as I am in the bike, but they can't all be the coolest project ever.

Oh, and of course, there's always sophomore review to think about right now too. I've got the basis of it together, my theme is Simple Problems Are Incredibly Complicated. I'm focusing my presentation, which is pretty much a summing up of the past two years of A&D, on the myPod, salt and pepper grinders, ant farm from CFC III, commuter bicycle, and my branded baby puzzle from CFC II. I've still got some planning and to do for the presentation, which is April 24th for me.

Oh, my digital portfolio has been updated. umich.edu/~petemh Tell me what you think!

Thanks for reading!

Heere Mousey Mousey! Part 2

2009-04-04T18:04:00.012-04:00

Testing has occurred. I tried model one and two.

First, Model Two is below.

I made model 2 longer so the ramps were less steep and made it easier for the mouse to climb up.

I also added a side door, held by magnets so you can easily get the mouse out after you've caught him.

There are heavy steel bars along the floor so he can't knock the whole thing over and get out!

Thanks for reading!

Heeere Mousey Mousey!

2009-03-22T17:32:00.005-04:00

In designer bootcamp we are making humane mouse traps. Pretty much having fun with simple mechanics and physics to catch mice!

We are limited on our materials and systems we could use to: bass wood, acrylic/polystyrene, gravity, magnets, elasticity, and wire forming. Also, the simpler the better.

I designed mine using the simple principle of a trap door. All the mouse has to do is walk to the cheese and he is caught! The doors flip over and the doors latch against each other so the mouse can't push his way out. Some people had these rather complicated designs where it was dubious to think the mouse would actually even set off the trap.

This is my first model, after presenting it to the class last week I'm changing the trap doors to lay closer to flat to the top surface and be easier to trip when the mouse walks on them, adding a small door on the side ramps to let the mouse out once you've caught him and improving the graphics.

The new exit door.

I'm showing it on Tuesday with the improvements. Hopefully Shaun will bring some real mice and we can test these suckers out!

Thanks for reading!

Thumb Replacements For Tired Hitchhikers!

2009-03-18T01:01:00.003-04:00

A week or two ago in Designer Bootcamp we learned how to make these super simple molds. Simply mix two playdoughy compounds together (I forget what they were made of) and mold it around what ever you want, we did our fingers. Me specifically, I did my thumb. You let the chemicals do the their thing and it sets up with a duromoter much the same as a bouncy ball.

Then, you fill the molds you just made of your thumb with epoxy! We did both clear and white epoxy. It was amazing the detail that the mold making got. Even the ridges on my knuckles and the lines on my skin!

Really this was all just to learn a new process, not for a certian project, but it was pretty fun. It's also nice to have a day where your not 'on' all day. Our class made that's what she said jokes the whole 3 hours. It was good.

Thanks for reading!

Ribbon of Dirt - Inpiration

2009-03-16T18:59:00.005-04:00

I presented my latest CFC project today for the nature inspiration project.

Here is the run down.

Ribbon Of Dirt

I derive much of my joy and fun in life from small ribbons of dirt winding its way through the woods. Hours upon hours spent exploring these ribbons have thoroughly accustomed me to their specific bobs, drops and twists. But although I know them like a lover, they surprise me and challenge me and leave my body and soul thriving for more. In the same way a person can be spontaneous, so can these sporadic ribbons of dirt. New obstacles fall and are thrown in my path, but they simply are highlights on each new ride through my own personal amusement park.

Like a roller coaster I ride the natural dips, the natural hills. These ribbons are my muses where I work out the complexities and concerns of creative life. Every new ride clears my entirety, like a brand new day, and gives me the inspiration to carry on creating.

Pete Hall

My class mostly liked it and appreciated the way I had arranged it on the wall. I was quite happy with myself, I had this one pretty well thought out and had answers for most of the their questions (example, why did you not have it come in from white to color like you have it fade out? Well, because I know where I've been, what's ahead is always changing and new. Pwned that question.).

Thanks for reading!

Welcome!

2009-03-12T14:01:00.002-04:00

Thanks for moving over with me to theprocessoftheproduct.

I'll be keeping you updated here from now on.

Thanks for reading!

Blog Changes Coming

2009-03-06T00:42:00.001-05:00

Think of this as a P.S.A.

In a weeks time, I will be changing the web address that this blog is posted to. Currently you read me at aplusdequalsm.blogspot.com but in a push to give myself a unified web presence under the PeterMartinHall. banner I will be changing this site to more reflect how I use this blog as a sounding board and an update medium on my projects and less as my base on the web. I hope to have my digital portfolio site umich.edu/~petemh be my professional web home base. I will continute to use my flickr and my Facebook as my social and less professional web base. If you'd like to be Facebook friends with me, search me (Pete Hall, see I'm less professional there, I drop the r and the Martin!) and send me a message your a follower of this blog. Make sure you send me the message, other wise I might now know who you are!

So, since this site is about how I work through design issues and projects, the site will be changing to theprocessoftheproduct.blogspot.com in one weeks time. So next week Thursday, March 12, the site will be switching over. Make a note and preemptively bookmark the site, it won't be live yet, but you'll be prepared!

Thanks for reading, I hope you all make the jump with me! And no, I will not be jumping on the Twitter bandwagon anytime soon. I don't have that much to say!

Ant Farm

2009-02-16T18:26:00.004-05:00

I presented the ant farm today in CFC, it went over quite well, I'm pretty happy with it.

The ants are doing great so far, and for only being in the sand for 3 days, they've started to tunnel a bit even. I only seem to have lost one or two ants so far (that's lost as in they've died, not gotten out), I assume they died when Kara and I put them in.

The piece was presented on a pedestal with my placard on the front explaining the piece. Shiva seemed to like it, and people kept coming back over to see it throughout the course of the class. Which I'm taking as a huge compliment. I think this may be my first cfc project that everyone likes, professor, class and me! Normally, I like it and the prof likes it but the class doesn't, or (more common) I like it kinda, but am unhappy overall, and no one else likes it either, so everyone liking a cfc piece of mine is a nice change.

The placard read,

Ant Farm

I aim to explore the harnessing of the environment by humans for our own benefit, be it frivolous, harmless uses like an ant farm or more serious uses, both in implementation and effects, such as disposal of pollutants. We dramatically change our environment and are thus limited by it, as we use our resources inefficiently we change the physical properties of what makes our environment, our environment. I aim to show this through ants constricted in an ant farm. Much the same as humans, the ants are constrained by their environment and they change their environment as they move the dirt but they are ultimately constrained by it and they changes they make. There is only so much space to move dirt in the ant farm, just as we only have so many resources.

Similarly, if we pollute a freshwater lake and abuse its ecosystem, we lose the lake as a source of drinking water and food. The ants only have a limited food supply; they must efficiently use what food is supplied to them to keep their colony alive. When their food supply runs out, they die. When we ruin our environment, we face the same pressures and consequences.

Pete Hall

The actual ant farm itself is made out of laser cut 1/4" clear cast arylic and an acid that melts arcylic and then lets it harden again to create a seemless bond where two pieces of acrylic meet whose name I can't remember.
The ants are harvester ants (who can apparently bite!) and have a limited food supply of seeds and other foliage and are living in simple sand substrate. I got them from antsalive.com.

Thanks for reading!

Ants!

2009-02-07T16:31:00.003-05:00

I bought ants a while back. Their still in the mail, I hope they make it here by Wednesday for my CFC Ecology project (I'm making an ant colony!). I bought it from one of those sites you never knew existed, but when you need them, hey! there is a site that sells ants and ant food! AntsAlive.com!

Thanks for reading!

Conceptually Unfinished

2009-02-07T14:30:00.006-05:00

Ah, CFC, how I dislike you.

So, the unnatural project for CFC III. I find it so hard to spend time on CFC classes in general, I'm more interested in my other courses, that my CFC projects really end up suffering. Case in point, the unnatural project.

My idea was to do something with a little Hindu girl named Laskshmi in India born with 8 limbs (4 legs, 4 arms) because of being born with a parasitic twin attached to her at the hips (no extra head). She was revered in India as a goddess, specifically the goddess Lakshmi, who she is named after. The rest of the world did not. So I was going to picture the little girl coming out of a lotus flower (which the goddess is normally pictured coming out of), thing is, I waited till last Monday to start. It was of course due Wednesday! So my lotus came out nicely, but I didn't give myself enough time to make the girl work, so I left it out. Big mistake.

Alone the lotus flower was nice, but had not one bit of concept. Opps.

The frame was made out of some nice stiff jewelry wire and lots of masking tape.

Then I wrapped it in pink tissue paper.

Added some green leaves and viola! a lotus with no concept!

Oh well, it's over now. I'll do better from now on and actually give myself time to work on CFC, no matter how uninteresting it is.

Thanks for reading, and Shiva (my cfc prof) if your reading this, sorry for coming to class with such a poor project.

826 Michigan Window Robot

2009-01-30T23:30:00.009-05:00

I can not believe I never posted the finished 826 Michigan robot! I just realized that my header image here at A plus D equals Me and my welcome image at my website, umich.edu/~petemh, both use the robot and I've never really shown him here! So, here goes!

Well it's pretty simple all together actually, the robot was made as an incandescent window dressing model to attract attention night and day to the 826 Michigan robot storefront. 826 Michigan is a "non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write." After tutoring there a few times for CFC II, I did the robot as way to give back.

Why a robot? Well the original 826 tutoring location in San Fransisco had a clause in it's building lease that they needed to have a store front, so they put up a pirate supply store, kinda as a joke. Except now the store is very profitable and helps to drive the free tutoring programs for the kids. It is now a tradition for all 826 locations around the nation to have a store front, Michigan chose a robot supply store and called it Liberty Street Robot Supply & Repair. How awesome is that for kids, get tutoring at the robot store! If you want to visit, it's here in Ann Arbor at 115 East Liberty Street a few blocks away from campus towards Main St.

826 Michigan Storefront

The robot himself (if it was a real robot, it would be programed to be a guy I've decided, a guy robot who waves hi!), was designed in Adobe Illustrator, and made out of 1/4" amber acrylic which was laser cut and then stacked and fastened together. His eyes light up when he is plugged in and his whole head glows! Which, of course, is awesome!

Hope you like him, it's one of my favorite things I've done at Michigan. I mean a light up robot? Please.

Thanks for reading!

myPod Docking Station

2009-01-29T20:49:00.009-05:00

For Designer Bootcamp we're designing the standard, the everybody makes one at design school, the ubiquitous iPod dock. This is actually the second iPod thing I've designed, the other was a speaker dock back in mech. engineering (link is to some old concept sketches, the actual manufactured one sucked, my group knew nothing about design, they decided on some super boring design that didn't work). This one is much more interesting. I didn't have to rely on engineers!

I had a few criteria for myself on the dock

-easy access
-display iPod
-charge/sync iPod
-easily store ear buds
-keep the aesthetic of Apple and the iPod
-good design semantics (simple to understand how to use it)

My basic original idea. (out of many, we all had to have several concepts worked out).

The initial foam model, ear buds stored in lower compartment.

The iPod lays down over it all covering up the unsightly ear bud cords, just displaying the sleek lines of the iPod.

Prototype #1 was built with Rhino (the Mac beta! it works well) and Adobe Illustrator, then made with laser cut 1/4"MDF board stacked, spray painted, and then vacuum formed with clear polystyrene over it. The clear material really gives a beautiful shine on top of the red coat on the base.

I learned with the foam model that the ear buds need a deeper cavity to store them with out pushing up the iPod, so, I made it deeper and wider by cutting the back supports for the iPod body into pillars, acquired almost 1.5 square inches!

Of course, it's got syncing/charging ability!

The red color doesn't really hold the Apple aesthetic (unless you look back at those old colorful iMacs!). The next iteration will be white. Also, I want to round out those hard edges on the inside of the dock, give them a small radius as hard corners are rare on Apple products.
I'm also concerned with the bulk of dock, I'm going to look into slimming it down.

Up next, refinement of the current prototype #1.

Thanks for reading!

Laser Cutting 101

2009-01-28T15:06:00.006-05:00

Yes, I've had lots of experience with the laser cutter before, but for Designer Bootcamp we're getting some more! Shaun wanted to see where we stood on our thinking in 3-d, so we made 4"x4" cubes and 4" diameter spheres on the laser cutter out of foam core. They had to fit together with friction. It was pretty fun actually, easy assignments are always appreciated!

I tried to make my cube feel like a building with a friction held pillar system.

My sphere, nothing to amazing really. It's a sphere!

We're working on iPod charging stations currently. I'll post my ideas on that soon.

Thanks for reading!